Hate Crime Law Will Change RI Numbers

By Irwin Becker

In most localities, and this state until this year, hate crimes included acts motivated by racial, religious, ethnic, sexual orientation, gender or disability. The law required the state police to monitor such crimes, collect monthly reports from local police departments, distribute the data to every police station and require each station to post what actions are covered under hate crimes.

According to the latest police report for 2009, there were 34 hate or bias crimes in the state, occurring in 11 communities. Separate reports included URI with four and Brown with none. The localities with hate crimes are: Providence (10), Pawtucket (4), Warwick (3), Cranston, East Providence, Johnston, Little Compton and West Warwick (all with 2), Newport, Smithfield and North Smithfield (all with 1).

As for the types of hate crimes, the highest, 24, involved destruction/damage/vandalism followed by 8 simple assaults. Leading target locations were residences, 11, highway/road/alley/street,
7, and church/synagogue/temple, 4. Attacks in fields or woods were 2. The highest bias group attacks were anti-gay and anti-black, 7 each, and anti-Jewish, 6.

All states have to report hate crimes to the FBI, whose data is available in a 2008 report. Rhode Island, for example, had 48 eligible agencies but only 14 reported 35 incidents of hate crimes. On the national level, of the 13,690 agencies only 2,145 reported 7,783 hate crimes or 15.7 per cent of all eligible groups. Or, as the FBI report concluded, 84.3 percent of various state law enforcement agencies in the country reported no hate crimes. The actual total of hate crimes involved 9, 91 victims, which included attacks against individuals, a business, an instruction, or society as a whole.

Under the various categories of hate crimes, according to the FBI, the highest percentages were blacks (race) Jewish (religion;) male homosexuals (sexual orientation), Hispanics (ethnic bias) and mental disability (disability bias).  With the new law including homelessness for the first time, the numbers in Rhode Island are almost sure to rise.